


Night Terrors

by hollo



Series: Pavor Nocturnus: A Voltron Horror Anthology [4]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Are you afraid of the dark? - Freeform, Creepy, Fear, Gen, Horror, Hunk POV, Monster - Freeform, Night Terrors, Nightmare, Not really though, Terror, Unsettling, creature - Freeform, i love you Hunk i'm sorry, voltron horror collection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-01
Updated: 2017-12-01
Packaged: 2019-02-09 01:49:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12877608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hollo/pseuds/hollo
Summary: "There was a heaviness settling in his limbs, his head weighing down onto his pillow. The vent gave an oddly loud bang but he barely noticed, his mind finally falling into a sleepy fog. He felt comfortably numb, limbs languid across his mattress, breaths coming slow and deep.A rattle broke through the quiet of the room, and he frowned drowsily, muttering to himself about space mice and curfews. The rattle came again however, louder this time, accompanied with a sound like something sliding across the floor. It was enough to prickle the senses that had been slowly relaxing, enough to make Hunk crack his eyes open to stare up at the ceiling above.The room was dark, and it took a while for his eyes to adjust. Once they were open, however, he couldn't quite get them closed again, no matter how sleep pulled at him. The unease from before was returning, but it was different this time, somehow more raw. It felt like when he was in the middle of a mission, about to head into a situation he couldn't predict, the unknown looming heavy and frightful over him. "





	Night Terrors

**Author's Note:**

> Horror is the name of the game! I think this fits more into the 'creepy' section of horror rather than straight up "terror" but I hope you enjoy! This WAS a practice in 'quick' writing (written over the course of a several hours over a couple of days) that turned out far longer than expected. 
> 
> Anyways, ENJOY! Please let me know if you do! (Or even if you don't).
> 
> I'm so glad to have written Hunk finally.
> 
> (like horror? Like Voltron? Like Voltron Horror? Keep an eye out on my [writing tumblr](https://hollowrites.tumblr.com) for updates on my pet project, the Voltron Horror Collection!)

Hunk had gotten used to the sounds of the ship long ago. The quiet sigh of the vents, the near-constant low-level hum around the tech, the odd taps and creaks here or there as the ship adjusted to new atmospheres or recalibrated its own pressure systems - it’d been months since they’d first boarded and none of it really bothered him much anymore.

Lately, however, his sleep had been restless. He could swear he'd wake up during the night, though he couldn't remember what it was that woke him. Fuzzy memories and an unnerving disquiet met him each morning, but though he tried he couldn't figure out what it was disturbing him in the night.

Stress, he figured. There was so much going on, what with the coalition and developing new tech and protecting the newly freed planets. It was all just too much, it was rattling his nerves, he supposed.

Still, even if he could explain it, the unease had gotten so bad he was becoming horribly rattled each time he lay down for the night - to the point of finding it difficult to fall asleep at all sometimes.

 

Tossing and turning for what felt like hours that night, he'd finally managed to find a comfortable position on his back, feeling a hazy drowsiness begin to slowly overtake him. His thoughts were difficult to slow down, however. Even if he felt sleepy enough to pass out, they still rattled around his head. He was unable to keep from wondering just how long it would take to fall asleep that night, wondering how long he would sleep at all, if it would even be restful or if he'd wake feeling groggy and bone tired and cranky again. Squeezing his eyes shut tightly, he tried to force his brain to stop hyperfocusing, to shift to softer and more pleasant thoughts, like puppies maybe, or kittens. Kittens in a sleepy kitten pile in a basket. On a blanket. The soft hisses of the vent rose slightly, accompanied by a rattle he'd long learned to associate with the climate control systems kicking in, but he ignored it, fully determined to force himself to replace his anxious thoughts with those of cute baby animals drowsing adorably away.

It seemed to be working. There was a heaviness settling in his limbs, his head weighing down onto his pillow. The vent gave an oddly loud bang but he barely noticed, his mind finally falling into a sleepy fog. He felt comfortably numb, limbs languid across his mattress, breaths coming slow and deep. 

A rattle broke through the quiet of the room, and he frowned drowsily, muttering to himself about space mice and curfews. The rattle came again however, louder this time, accompanied with a sound like something sliding across the floor. It was enough to prickle the senses that had been slowly relaxing, enough to make Hunk crack his eyes open to stare up at the ceiling above.

The room was dark, and it took a while for his eyes to adjust. Once they were open, however, he couldn't quite get them closed again, no matter how sleep pulled at him. The unease from before was returning, but it was different this time, somehow more raw. It felt like when he was in the middle of a mission, about to head into a situation he couldn't predict, the unknown looming heavy and frightful over him. 

His fingers prickled, but he couldn't move. There was a shudder in his legs but he  _ couldn’t move _ . The breaths he'd worked so hard to slow were beginning to come fast, his heart beginning to race as his eyes darted from the ceiling above to look towards the rest of the room.

There was nothing there. He knew there was nothing there - why would there be? - but his pulse continued to race regardless, a dreadful stab of anxiety hitting him straight in the gut. He tried to roll over, but his limbs felt leaden, stuck to the bed. The unease was growing into panic as he struggled to move any part of himself, but no matter how desperately he tried he couldn't budge. His eyes were the only thing that moved, and with the knowledge that the rest of his body wasn't responding his fear spiked, heart beating a rapid staccato in his chest. 

Something was wrong. Something was wrong, something was not right at all - his eyes darted across what he could see of his room again, eyeing the knickknacks just barely visible on the shelves, the pictures and diagrams posted on his wall. They were all washed out in the darkness, vague shapes he couldn't quite make sense of, alien and unfamiliar, and that only made it all worse. He struggled again, grunting with the effort to get his limbs moving but nothing happened, no matter how hard he tried. It was like his body wasn’t connected to him, as if the signals he was trying to send weren’t making it anywhere. Again his eyes darted around the room, to the ceiling and then the walls. The darkness seemed alive as his mind raced into panic, the shadows seemed to move around him - the shadows  _ moved _ . 

A trick of his mind, he thought anxiously, he was too worked up. But something fluttered in the darkness, catching his attention.

There - his eyes focused on a spot just to the right of his desk, on the large diagram hanging on the wall under the vent. It was skewed, one corner drooping low. It hadn't been drooping before he'd gone to bed, he was sure of it. Mostly sure, at least. The walls were metal and strong magnets held his diagrams up and they shouldn't have been capable of falling off the wall for no reason - but still the loose corner fluttered in a soft gust of air from the vent and Hunk couldn’t rationalize the oddity.

The shadows moved again. A darkness, darker than it's surroundings, shifted just below his line of vision. Pulse skyrocketing, Hunk let out a garbled whimper as he struggled to move his head. Again, his body refused to cooperate, only his eyes could shift, straining to see what was there. Desperately, he tried to tell himself it was his imagination, that he was seeing things - he'd been sleeping badly, the day had been long and tiring - but he couldn't shake the fear that chilled his skin and shuddered down his spine, some horrid anticipation prickling his skin.

The sound from before came again, something sliding across the floor, soft but apparent in the quiet of the room. It sounded closer now, and as Hunk lay there, immobilized by an unknown force, all he could do was stare in terror out at the darkness from where the sound came as it slowly became louder. The odd darkness hovering beneath his line of vision grew both darker and larger as the sound neared, forming into an odd lump he could just barely see.

There was another long sliding sound, the dark lump disappearing for a moment - and then a thump shook his bed. He yelped, though it came out strangled, garbled, and he would’ve jumped up if only his body had been responsive. For a moment there was silence, and then that darkness rose at the side of his bed, stretching up, up,  _ up _ until it towered above him, a horrid shape, nearly humanoid but so very apparently  _ not _ .

There were no details that he could make out, but it's silhouette alone shot terror through him. His senses screamed, he needed to get away, but all he could do was lay helpless, body immobile, as the darkness - the  _ creature _ \- slowly stretched out limb after limb after limb. Each was skeleton thin, as black as the rest of it, and gnarled looking, with too many joints in all the wrong places. Each unfolded as if it had been curled up according style against its body, each ended in a four-fingered hand that stretched surreally long fingers out, splayed them against the ceiling above his bed, against the wall next to it. They were thin like twigs, unnaturally knobbed, and as they shifted across the wall Hunk could see them leave a trail of shiny, inky black.

A rancid smell was filling his nostrils; suddenly, he realized he could hear the thing breathing, a wheezing, rattling sound that almost seemed to mimic the soft shush and rattles of the vents themselves. It stayed still for a moment, a long, long moment where his heart felt like it would beat out of his chest and his breaths began to come fast and strained. 

Then it moved - all at once its many limbs shifted to stick to ceiling and wall as if it were a grotesque gecko, its malformed, darkened body now suspended over him. The smell was growing, stinging his nose and throat as he tried to breathe. Terror pounded in his veins and desperately he begged quietly for his body to react, to listen to him, to get away from the creature that was now slowly - slowly - lowering what seemed to be its head towards him. That appendage was vaguely humanoid as well, with a rounded end and a pointed end, but the similarities ended there. The closer to his face it came - neck unfolding much like its limbs, in joints of odd lengths, knobby and skinny - the more grotesque it seemed to become. Covered in a strange substance, like melted rubber or tar, it cracked and wrinkled as the creature lowered it. There were no apparent eyes, no nostrils or mouth that Hunk could make out, just a misshapen lump of blackness that seemed to move, to pulse, in time with its wheezing.

The creature breathed out - Hunk wasn’t quite sure where the breath came from, but it blew that rancid, horrible stench right at him, making him gag. The creature’s limbs shifted, fingers dancing across the ceiling above and the wall, and its body shook, a wave like motion that Hunk could just barely make out. The appendage above him shuddered, twisting one way, then another, until very suddenly a crack appeared at its front, running from side to side like some sick imitation of a smile. 

With horror Hunk watched as a stream of inky black dripping out of that crack, and then another, streaming down to hang in sticky, syrupy strings below. The creature shuddered again, its entire body wracked with a a spasm, and the crack on its face spread open even more. More of the black ichor dripped out, and in agonizing slow motion a drop detached from the stringy mess to fall directly onto Hunk’s face.

It didn’t burn, it didn’t sting - but the stench of it had Hunk gagging again, his stomach pitching a fitful revolt within him. His body shuddered, he would’ve thrown up if he could, but still he couldn’t move, still his body refused to do more than shake in an immobilized stupor. 

And now more of that dreadful substance was dropping, falling onto his face as the creature above him shuddered and wheezed, the thick disgusting substance falling in strings and globs, landing on his skin and leaving sickeningly cold and sticky trails across it.

He couldn’t name the stench it carried - rotting meat, decaying fruit, a horrid mixture of every bad smell he’d ever smelled and  _ more _ . He could only imagine this was what grave rot smelled of, and now it was coating his face and dripping into his mouth. The taste was somehow worse - his entire body convulsed as it trickled past his lips and down his throat. Again the gagging, again his stomach pitching a pitiful fit that his body wouldn’t react to. Tears stung his eyes, whimpers choked his throat. He couldn’t stand it, he couldn’t take it, he couldn’t even fight back or get away. 

The creature’s body shook again, its head whipping back and forth until suddenly a full gush of the black ichor fell on his, splattering across his face and the sheets of his bed. The stench was too much - it overpowered all his senses, sent his terror skyrocketing until his pulse was the only thing he could hear, beating like a massive drum inside his head. The creature was still above him, shuddering, crooked limbs shifting and moving, and the fear was eating him up inside, he was fighting to move with every inch of his being and still, and  _ yet _ , his body refused to move, not an inch, not a millimeter. 

The creature lowered itself, drawing in a breath through that grotesque orifice, and as it neared, that wretched, horrifying face nearing his own, Hunk found some sort of energy spiking through him, some bolt of  _ something _ that broke through that barrier between his mind and body, his limbs flailing suddenly in an overpowering flight response as he opened his mouth to scream -

  
  
  
  
  
  


\- Hunk shot up in bed with a start. His heart pounded in his chest, so loud in his ears that he almost couldn’t hear the sound of his alarm going off. One hand clutched to his chest, breath wheezing, he fumbled with the wall controls until he could turn the alarm off.

The lights in his room were growing brighter, reacting automatically his wakened state, and he glanced around to find that nothing was amiss. Everything was exactly where he’d put it the night before. Relief tempered the anxious fear that had stuck around when he woke, but with a strained chuckle he pushed it aside, allowing himself to accept that it was only a dream. A horrible, nasty, terrifying dream but still, only a dream.

He let his hand drop from his chest and, thoughts already turning to what to make for breakfast, raised the other to rub the sleep from his eyes.

Something sticky pulled at his fingers as he wiped them down his cheek. Frowning, he pulled his hand away, for a moment not comprehending what he saw - until slowly the meaning dawned on him, his heart beginning to race heavy and fast in his chest as he stared down in growing horror at the inky black substance coating his fingers.

**Author's Note:**

> Like horror in your Voltron? Want more of it? Keep an eye out on my [writing tumblr](https://hollowrites.tumblr.com) for updates on my pet project, the Voltron Horror Collection!


End file.
